I hope you got to see my American Idol video last week.....Because it has been banned!
I wish this was a joke.
Let me tell you what happened.
As you know, my song "American Idol" is critical of the show because it points out the fact that they do not allow anyone over 29 to compete.
We filmed a funny video that used used clips from American Idol to make it look like my performance of the song was being judged on the show.
We premiered the video on Tuesday 02/14/09
On Friday 02/16/09 we broke over 20 thousand views
On Saturday morning 02/17/09 We found out that that the video had
been pulled from youtube at the request of Fremantle International (the company that owns the American Idol TV show).
They claimed copyright infringement because we used clips from their show in our video.
We felt that the use of those clips falls under the legal category of "fair use" which allows usage of copyrighted material for satire and parody.
For more info on the standards of fair use please click here
If you go to youtube you will find thousands of American Idol parodies. A good number of those parodies use clips from the show too.
So why aren't those clips removed from youtube also?
Maybe it's because none of those parodies where being critical of the show.
Maybe it's because my song points out an uncomfortable fact about the show, that American Idol doesn't want to talk about and wants to avoid any kind of public discussion about it.
American Idol is an entertaining show, but I personally think it's wrong and terribly "Un-American" for them to bar anyone who has the talent to compete just on the basis of their age.
In my opinion you might as well exclude anyone for race, religion or anything else, because it's the same thing.
Which is why until last year, I never watched the show and encouraged people avoid watching it.
SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
I need to speak to some individuals of the Lawerly persuasion.
I could fight this legally, but the money (at least thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands) to hire an attorney is not an option to someone of my means.
But there are other ways I can fight this. And that is what I am looking into now.
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